Help With 4.20

[Musicman51]

I just did the upgrade to 4.20. I have a couple of questions. All is working fine for the most part. But why has duplicating slowed way down? It is really slooooooooow now. Takes forever to make a backup disc. Also, my computer won't let me open the Users Manual? whats with that? something about windows won't let me view "Active X" or "Scripts"?? Is the User Manual on the MTU website? I just installed the upgrade right over my previous version. Should i uninstall everything, and reinstall? I'm using Windows XP. One last thing. I've notice 4.20 is real "Blank Media Sensitive". This version doesn't like my Sony, Maxell, or Fugi media. But will record like downtown on my cheap $5.99 for 50 CD's Philips. If i had hair, i'd pull it out.

[billyo]

Originally Posted by Musicman51

I just did the upgrade to 4.20. I have a couple of questions. All is working fine for the most part. But why has duplicating slowed way down? It is really slooooooooow now. Takes forever to make a backup disc. Also, my computer won't let me open the Users Manual? whats with that? something about windows won't let me view "Active X" or "Scripts"?? Is the User Manual on the MTU website? I just installed the upgrade right over my previous version. Should i uninstall everything, and reinstall? I'm using Windows XP. One last thing. I've notice 4.20 is real "Blank Media Sensitive". This version doesn't like my Sony, Maxell, or Fugi media. But will record like downtown on my cheap $5.99 for 50 CD's Philips. If i had hair, i'd pull it out.

i was able to open up the users manual w/o any problem, you should see a prompt on the active x that says "click on this" to view ...the problem i am getting was everytime i open up microstudio i get the "Registry Change Detected" with the " Allow this change box marked " other than that minor problem everything is running right

[marklwood]

Originally Posted by Musicman51

Also, my computer won't let me open the Users Manual? whats with that? something about windows won't let me view "Active X" or "Scripts"??

I think billyo hit it on the head. You probably, and very smartly so, have your IE security settings too high. I would change them, but only long enough to view the manual.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by billyo

i was able to open up the users manual w/o any problem, you should see a prompt on the active x that says "click on this" to view ...the problem i am getting was everytime i open up microstudio i get the "Registry Change Detected" with the " Allow this change box marked " other than that minor problem everything is running right

There should also be an Always allow setting too.
George, in your Internet Explorer options under the advanced tab I think is a setting to allow Active X and scripts from the hard drive to run. This needs to be enabled. Then you won't see this

[billyo]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

There should also be an Always allow setting too.
George, in your Internet Explorer options under the advanced tab I think is a setting to allow Active X and scripts from the hard drive to run. This needs to be enabled. Then you won't see this

always allow was checked, but the msg still keeps popping up everytime i opened ms, but i got that fixed too, i just checked " remember this action " box and i dont get that msg. anymore

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by Musicman51

I just did the upgrade to 4.20. I have a couple of questions. All is working fine for the most part. But why has duplicating slowed way down? It is really slooooooooow now. Takes forever to make a backup disc.

Define forever George. Duplicating will certainly take longer than just writing a disc since it has to read and save the entire disk to the hard drive before writing the new one. It is also error correcting as it is reading to try to create the cleanest copy. The time it takes depends on the condition of the disc you are duplicating.

Originally Posted by Musicman51

Also, my computer won't let me open the Users Manual? whats with that? something about windows won't let me view "Active X" or "Scripts"?? Is the User Manual on the MTU website? I just installed the upgrade right over my previous version. Should i uninstall everything, and reinstall? I'm using Windows XP.

The Manual is on your hard drive but is written in HTML (web page language) and uses Active X scripts. It has been this way for a long time so I am not sure why you are suddenly having problems with it. As stated above you need to change the settings in Internet Explorer to allow running Active X content from within the computer.

Originally Posted by Musicman51

One last thing. I've notice 4.20 is real "Blank Media Sensitive". This version doesn't like my Sony, Maxell, or Fugi media. But will record like downtown on my cheap $5.99 for 50 CD's Philips. If i had hair, i'd pull it out.

It isn't Microstudio that determines what media it will use but the drive does. My thought on this may be that the drive's laser may be weakening. The more expensive, better quality discs would have a higher quality, thicker coating on it that the cheaper ones. Thus a weakened laser would burn fine on the thinner coating and have problems getting through the thicker coating.

[Musicman51]

Thanks guys for your help, i always always appreciate it. billyo, i to had the pop up telling me "Registry Change Detected". And i also just clicked the "Allow this change" box. That was my McAfee going bazerk. So that annoying thing is history. I don't want for security reasons to change my settings to allow ActiveX and Scripts, period. I did that once and my McAfee started going crazy. I was just wondering if the User Manual is on the MTU website. I would download it from there. I had no trouble what soever in opening a User Manual on any of the MTU products i've purchased before this upgrade...none of them. Dale my good friend, i know basically how Microstudio works. All i can do is compare them to the previous versions i have downloaded... This is what i meant by the "Duplicating" has slowed down. It's at a crawl. Not that i'm in a big hurry to make a backup disc. But that is what i was refering to. I always compare a new upgrade download, to what i had been using. I have nothing else to compare it to, to see if i like it or not, right? So far, i am not in love with this 4.20 upgrade. That might change. The last 3 or 4 upgrades i've done on Microstudio, you would have never known i upgraded. They ran like butter, not 1, not 1 single clinch. And that is a pat on the back for the hardworking folks at MTU. Now the disc situation. I have a new "Optiarc" from MTU. So it's not my writter. MTU certified. It's the software, does NOT like my media. I have come across this before in the "Old Days" of mtu. That was one reason they started selling their own media to begin with. I spoke with a puter geek, and there are some changes i can make on my end, to possibly, make this software a little more user friendly. This reminds me of the old days when i use to use Microstudio, and nothing would record. Hit and miss at best. On my old Windows 98, amd ME operating systems. BTW, i do all my testing with brand new CD+G's. In this case it was a new Sound Choice disc. "Forever" simply put, is a comparison between the action of this upgrade, compared to the other several i had done. That's all. 4.20, is working. Although it rejects media worse then any other upgrade i've used. I'm still tinkering...Again, thank you guys for all your help. George {The Old Guy}

[ddouglass]

George, the software does not read the media. That is in the disc drive controller area (hardware in the drive) that determines if the media is writing correctly. All MS does is send the data to the drive and wait for the drive to respond back that it is ready for the next block. If the drive does not respond back within a certain time frame or responds with an error then the program shows an error.
You can change the write speed of the drive and see if that will help. Right click on the drive in Windows Explorer and go to properties. On the Recording tab there is a setting for write speed.

[Musicman51]

Thank you so much dale for that information. I will certainly try that. Like i said, i'm still tinkering, and tweating this software. It's new to me, so i will have to give it sometime. I do understand that. Thank You Dale.

I've gotten a couple of messages from a couple of folks who seem to have misconstrued what i typed earlier. I see one has to be careful what one types. I consider MTU to be the "World Leader" in karaoke software production tools. I would not think of doing a show now without Hoster for instance. I have been an MTU software user for ions now. I started out with early versions of Microstudio, and Home Producer. MTU, is a pioneer in karaoke software products, and their support is first class in the business. I've always, always gotten a reply from a trouble ticket, always with a friendly helpful suggestion, the few times i needed extra help.

If i may take just a quick moment to relate a story. Years ago we did karaoke by cassette. Even before the big laser disc. They had the printed lyrics with them. We did a small neighborhood bar sing~a~long. Only companies around at that time were Sound Choice, Music Maestro, And Pocket Songs. Along with this little company called American Accompaniment They eventually went out of business, because they could not afford to change over to the CDG format. This company consisted of Nashville Session Musicians you hear on hit records out of Nashville today. Well, i called them and made a deal to buy one cassette of everything in their library. There were 1000's of song titles. My family thought i was nuts when UPS delivered a truckload of boxes filled with karaoke cassettes. I took and ran these through my home studio, cleaned up the tape hiss, and put 100's of these on CD's, in Wave format back then. I learned about MTU. I purchased an early version of Microstudio, and Karaoke Home Producer. What is KH Pro today. I tapped 1000's of those songs out using my MTU products. I still use these early MTU produced songs today. The graphics are as good as any mass produced disc you buy today. And the music is 100% times better then the over midi stuff they crank out. Folks never know it's a home produced product they are singing to. I still get many compliments on my custom made karaoke disc. MTU, is the best karaoke software out, period! I hope this clears up those few that misunderstood my previous reply...

[ddouglass]

That's an impressive amount of work. I bet your fingers were getting tired after all that tapping. I have to say you have a lot more patience than I do.
To answer your previous question the manual isn't available for download. Allowing Active X content to run from your CD drive and from the hard drive (first 2 items in Internet Explorer Optins/Security is not a bad thing and many programs now use those types of scripts. This does not allow them to run from the internet as that is a separate control. As far as McAfee screaming about it you may need to change a setting in there too to allow this. For the manual it allows you to click on an item in the table of contents and go directly to theat subject/section. I don't think the earlier manuals have this feature so this may be why you are only seeing the message now.
To go back to the slow duplicate, I did forget to mention, that in previous version including 4.006 you had an option in the Default Drives tool to choose Good, Better, and Best settings for the drives. This defined how much error correction and I think the write speed. You no longer have that option and all settings are for the best quality in both cases. This I am sure is contributing to the slowdown. If I remember right from the beta testing the Duplication was taking roughly 10-15 minutes for the whole process. And this was no slower than using Roxio to do the same thing.

[marklwood]

You know I have to throw in my 2¢.

I was thinking of 2 avenues.
First would be the Windows swap file. It may either be undersized, or space restricted because of room on the hard drive. The read portion is buffered in the swap file pror to writing to disk.
Second would be memory. If you are not online, try shutting down McAfee and any other things running in the background just while you are writing the disk.